I normally wouldn’t post about a general news story, but since this is very close to home and there’s a chance the man of the hour could end up on my PhD committee, I thought it might be nice to write about.  Plus, I’m not sure how the general media is going to cover this.  Today Shuji Nakamura from UCSB won the Millennium Prize.  The Millennium Prize is considered to be one of the most prestigious and certainly biggest technology award in the world.  It’s new, having only started in 2004, and is only awarded once every two years.  The first winner was Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the developer of the world wide web.  Shuji is a huge leader in the field of gallium nitride, and developed the first bright blue LED as well as the first blue laser diode.  The most impressive thing was how he did it, with very little support from his company, Nichia, at the time.  He had to build his own MOCVD machine from scratch, then improve it to get the quality of material needed for devices.  He’s responsible for jump starting the current industry I’m in.  The applications of blue LED’s are enormous.  The most talked about one is solid state lighting, or replacing incandescent bulbs with LEDs.  Incandescent bulbs are extremely inefficient, ranging from about 1-4% in converting electricity into light.  Fluorescent bulbs are better, reaching up to 25%.  However, white LED’s can theoretically convert 60-80% of the electrical power into visible light.  Not only would this drastically energy costs in industrial countries such as the US, but it would also impact developing countries without electrical grids.  A solar panel would provide enough power to use with white LED’s, providing light to areas that currently use kerosene or other primitive methods. 

I was able to attend the press conference earlier today, and I came away very impressed.  To start, the chancellor, Henry Yang, spoke about the importance of the award and Shuji’s accomplishments.  Next, a member of the Finnish government (I forget his actual position, but he sounded important), gave an overview of the prize.  After him came the most impressive part, at least to me.  The three Nobel Laureates from the sciences, Herb Kroemer, Alan Heager, and Walter Kohn, all gave their perspective on what the award meant, and to offer their congratulations to Shuji.  It was very impressive to see three of the most impressive minds in the world speak one after another.  The dean of engineering gave a quick speech, and then Shuji took the stage.  He gave a decent overview of what the field was about, and showed off some examples, such as an HD-DVD player, LED flashlight, and pocket projector.  I haven’t taken Shuji’s class (mostly because it’s useless), but it’s fun to hear how excited he gets about certain things.  He mentioned multiple times the ability to use LED’s to help plants grow since they don’t emit in the IR spectrum, and the implications this would have on space agriculture.  After Shuji’s talk concluded, the press conference was over.  I got the feeling that everyone was in awe of everything that was going on.  The multiple Nobel winners, the rarity and enormity of the prize was enough to make just about any student a little star-struck.

It’s a great honor to be able to work at a university with such a positive research atmosphere.  UCSB is developing into a world class research institution, and it’s fun to be around for the ride.  So, congratulations to Shuji Nakamura for winning the 2006 Millennium Foundation Prize.

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